Happy 1.2 Patch Day, everyone!
Ever since the playtest was announced, I had been working on pet builds to see how they would rise to the new challenges brought upon by the patch. We laughed, we cried, we mourned over dead builds (real and exaggerated), but the good fight marched forward. This was a latecomer - only brought into fruition the past few days, but it’s a very solid build that I’m sure pet lovers would enjoy.
I had been doing SR ever since I got into Forgotten Gods, but I never really considered speedrunning it. I mean really speedrunning it, trying to get lowered times and praying to RNGesus that the Nemesis layout would come soon into the map. Having tried it, I really understand why pets were never considered for the top 20 builds. Speedrunning SR is hard! Without leech or passive regen, you’re constantly in danger of getting overwhelmed and praying your pets can chew through the enemies before the overwhelming horde just ends you.
So I set out with a journey in mind. I wanted a viable pet build with Tree of Life and Ishtak. With both of those activating on hit, it allows for massive passive sustain and pet taunting to remove enemy aggro from you. That makes running towards the SR Nemesis pack much easier. But 20 Water and 10 Light affinity points take a lot of investment. Plus Shepherd’s Crook is mandatory to get at least a semblance of damage. Plus there’s the matter of having good RR capability.
There’s Aether damage that has Water affinity in its RR skill, Widow, but Aether pets suck. At least comparatively speaking (I’ve gotten SR85 with Aether Pets Vindicator, but it’s still leagues below other pet builds). There are other damage types like Cold or Fire, but the Mogdrogen route blows Ishtak out of the water (especially with the increased emphasis on pet Physical Resistance, which naturally comes with the Mogdrogen route alongside the best offensive pet stats).
Then during the 1.2 test, we have this little nugget:
*Stormbringer of Malmouth: Converts 100% Chaos damage to Lightning for pets
That allows us to convert all of Bysmiel’s Domination flat damage to Lightning, giving us that glorious Frenzied Devotion proc making up for the loss of Mogdrogen. Then more conversions came. Kelphat rings now convert 50% Physical to Lightning, giving us full Physical conversion with just the ring slots (which are fairly difficult to slot in a pet build). Salazar’s Sovereign Blade became an option, and with it the best item granted pet. But what would I pair it with? I had already done Raven with Primal Spirit from Shaman, so I wanted to try something else. Then even MOAR conversion options were introduced, and with it came the Blight Fiends were able to be converted to full Lightning. I mean, they could have been Elemental damage with the Bysmiel’s set, but having one damage type is so much better to work with than 3 damage types. And with it, the build came into fruition.
1.2.0.0 The Lightning Bomber - GRIMTOOLS
Here’s the full list of buffs added from the 1.2 patch:
*Stormbringer of Malmouth: Converts 100% Chaos damage to Lightning for pets, also gives bonuses to Summon Familiar
*Mythical Voidmancer’s Cord: Converts 100% Acid damage to Lightning for pets
*Mythical Glyph of Kelphat’Zoth: Converts 50% Physical damage to Lightning (up from 25%)
*Mythical Will of Bysmiel: Introduces the minions from the non-mythical version
Then there’s more. Bysmiel’s Domination got some buffs. All sets received +3 to their skills instead of +2. The amount of things that came together for this build is wild.
There is one slight caveat to the build presented as is: Blight Burst only fully taunts the target at 17/12. If this is an issue, you can replace the Mythical Will of the Patron shoulders with Ghol’s to get the necessary points in Blight Burst plus some DA from the 2pc set bonus. Yes, I know my OA is not high enough to summon the Ghol pets. It’s there for the skill bonuses.
Gameplay is simple: summon your Unstable Anomaly Blight Fiends, then run to your desired target and let loose. Normally I wouldn’t recommend Unstable Anomaly, but the medal slot allows you to summon them every 4 seconds, which is plenty fast.
Here’s some videos to demonstrate the build’s performance:
Crucible: Average time is about 5:40, not particularly the speediest out there,
SR 75-76 (I don’t know how people tolerate how swingy the RNG can get with Nemesis placement and all, I’d go crazy trying to get a good time)
Ravager of Minds:
Callagdra (Poor bird doesn’t stand a chance, so you’re going at this with your Blight Fiends the whole time)
